Tuesday night, rambling Pleasant

Biked to Pete's for a lift, no sign of him, so txted and something had come up so headed home, jumped in the car and headed for the Upper Major Hornbrook, txting Steve who was out too, thinking i'd be late for the 6.22 meeting time, but ended up arriving at 6.15, finding Wazzzaaaah parked up on his bike, nicely warmed up from his climb.  Then Robin, Wayne, and Andy and Tony in their three respective vehicles arrived.  We headed up Britten, opening up the lungs and draining the legs nice and quickly.  Then around the top singletrack, pinging from hidden rock to hidden rock under the tussocks, and onto the road.

Down the road and into the climb from Cavendish.  Clamber, clamber, not feeling too bad, and the top turned up sooner than I expected.  Big regroup at the top, then into the descent.  Fun fun fun.  First rocky sections were good, seemed to be gliding over them, then into the tussocks, swooping from bend to bend, total groove and flow, until i missed a corner...  got back on track and swooped and flowed the rest of the way down at sweet sweet speed.

Regrouped above the ruins, and then headed on down.  Once again, the boniness of the upper half just glided under my riding, the lovely DW link doing it's thing, and my old hardtail skillz kicking in to add to the flow.  SweeeeeeT!  A few scratchy corners, but no loss of traction - well, nothing scary.  Flowed and pumped around to the 'gulch and pedaled through the humpy bits and then paused and hung for a regroup.  Back into the descent, picked up heaps of speed on the rocky start then flew through all the swoopy corners, catching air on the humps and screaming at the sheep to get out of the way.  Scratchy drifts around into Dave's section, hooning down this and around the bends, finding air off things i'd never seen before.  Was a great run.  Then into the bit that's been so grovelly over winter, pumping through this, around into the wee valley.  I paused just after this til the others appeared around the hillside, then I got going and popped air off each and ever launching pad, flying down and round into the first rocky up, totally mis-geared it and paused, foot onto a rock, push, and rolled onwards.  Into the next up and swoopy swoopy down to the end.

Then we cruised up the road, slowly gapping Robin, but at the big pines we all dropped into granny and rolled nice and slow til he caught us up, then it was onwards up round the bends and into Britten, still enough light to see by.  Again.  I had a total blast on this descent.  Flying down the trail, nearly losing it a couple times in the narrow rutted trail (in places), but maintained composure and flew down to the end.  Over the fence, and said our good byes and it was 8pm as I drove down the hill.